Thursdays are good but Fridays are always better. The closer you get to the weekend, the more excited you become and the more exciting your options are. There is no doubt that Day 1A of the GUKPT Didsbury event went down well and was a big success but there was a big difference between the Thursday and the Friday. This was no criticism of the organisers or the players that took part in the opening day but there were more players and a bigger buzz of excitement surrounding the Friday play.
There were a total of 94 players involved in the Day 1B activities, which was a sharp rise from the 59 that took part on Day 1A. In total, 153 players were fighting for the rights to make it through to Day 2 and just less than a third managed to progress to the Saturday action. 55 players were starting out on Saturday morning with high hopes for the event but 40 of the players will be leaving very disappointed. This is because only the top 15 players will be taking cash away with them. This means that there is a lot to play for and the tension and drama is guaranteed.
Plenty of chips picked up on Friday
The big chip leader on the day also turned out to be the big chip leader of the Day 1’s as Neils Ladefoged made hay with his 20,000 stack of opening chips. By the end of play, Ladeofoged had turned this into 119,750 chips. This beats the amount of Nigel Ventre who managed to claim 99,925 on Thursday evening.
Ladefoged does not have many cashes showing in his Hendon Mob page, but the ones that are displayed are quite impressive to say the least. He has live tournament winnings of £37,900 with his most recent cash being for £10,350 that was his reward for finishing seventh in the 2012 English Poker Open.
With players like Ventre, Peter Wigglesworth, Kevin Houghton, Matt Davenport and Erimas Livonas already through from Thursday, there were some big UK poker players making it through on Friday too. Coming through with Ladefoged were players like Mike Hill, who managed to pick up 118,375 which was also more than the amount picked up by Thursday’s leader. There was Day1B success for Julian Thew, the Sky Poker player too, who managed to earn 93,500 chips. Other players making it though were John Eames, Stuart Rutter, Steve Holden and Tom Hall.